Bitcoin mining company that repurposes waste coal raises $105 million in funding
Stronghold Digital Mining, a Pennsylvania-based bitcoin mining firm, announced Tuesday that it raised $105 million in funding from two private placements.
The investors are “mainly family offices,” a company representative told The Block, who added that Stronghold intends on using the $105 million funding to further fund restoration efforts in Pennsylvania, purchase crypto mining hardware, and finance more waste coal clean-up facilities. The fundraises were disclosed in a pair of SEC filings made public earlier this year.
Stronghold’s Scrubgrass Generating Plant uses waste coal, an environmentally toxic byproduct of coal mining, first to fuel its electricity generation. The company later brought crypto mining hardware into the power mining facility, creating “an economic incentive to continue cleaning up waste coal piles and land,” the company representative told The Block.
Scrubgrass eliminates more than 90% of toxic substances from the waste coal in the energy production process, and the resulting fly ash can be used as a fertilizer approved by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture.
“Coal waste fires have been wreaking havoc in my home state of Pennsylvania for the last hundred years,” said Bill Spence, co-chairman of Stronghold, in the statement. “We employ 21st-century crypto mining techniques to remediate the impacts of 19th- and 20th-century coal mining in some of the most environmentally neglected regions of the United States.”
Stronghold's CEO is Greg Beard, who formerly worked as the global head of natural resources for Apollo Global Management, the billion-dollar alternative investment management firm.
Stronghold's waste-coal-powered energy and bitcoin production reclaimed 1,000 acres of previously environmentally denigrate land and return it to local communities, which have then been used as playgrounds, sports fields, and green spaces.
While Stronghold’s energy production uses waste material, other bitcoin mining operations have opted to offset their carbon emissions or use hydropower to become more sustainable.
